Month: August 2022

This story originally appeared on 03.30.22

The first thing you need to know about Charlie the golden retriever is that he loves Mr. Quackers.

Mr. Quackers is Charlie’s stuffed yellow duck. Charlie carries him around everywhere, he loves him so.

@charliethegolden18

I always so happ to see my lil bro 😋 #dogsoftiktok #petsoftiktok #dogs #goldenretriever

Anyone who’s had a dog with a favorite stuffy knows that it’s a bit like a child with a favorite stuffy. As long as the stuffy is there, all is well. If stuffy goes missing, all hell breaks loose. Nobody take the stuffy away. Nobody lose the stuffy. Nobody mess with the stuffy.

Where they go, their stuffy goes.

Where Charlie goes, Mr. Quackers goes.

That’s just the way it is.

---

@charliethegolden18

Happens every..single..time 😂🙈 #dogsoftiktok #petsoftiktok #dogs #goldenretriever

The attachment is real. Watch what happens when Charlie’s buddy Buddy tries to mess with Mr. Quackers.

@charliethegolden18

Ain’t nobody touching my Mr. Quackers 😋 #dogsoftiktok #petsoftiktok #dogs #goldenretriever

“There, see it!” Oh, Charlie. His love for Mr. Quackers is unrivaled, which is why his owner decided to pull an incredible pet prank and dress up as Mr. Quackers himself.

@charliethegolden18

When your husband finds a costume that looks identical to your dogs favorite duck toy 😂 #dogsoftiktok #petsoftiktok #dogs #goldenretriever

The things we do for our dogs, indeed.

And when Charlie got to meet the life-sized Mr. Quackers? So. Much. Joy.

@charliethegolden18

Dressed up as our dogs favorite duck toy. Full video on FB & YouTube. Link in bio. #dogsoftiktok #petsoftiktok #dogs #goldenretriever

Charlie practically wagged his tail right off his body. And he never let go of the original Mr. Quackers the whole time—at least on TikTok.

The extended video on YouTube shows Charlie dropping Mr. Quackers and trying to get a hold of Huge Mr. Quackers by the neck. Not in an aggressive way—more like in a “Hey, lemme carry you around like I do Mr. Quackers!” kind of way.

And then the slow discovery that Huge Mr. Quackers smells an awful lot like his hooman … just too precious.

Animals can bring such joy to our lives, especially when we take the time to play with them. Thanks, Charlie’s parents, for sharing this moment of adorable delight with us all.

Follow more of Charlie and Mr. Quackers’ adventures on TikTok and YouTube.

@charliethegolden18

Ain’t nobody touching my Mr. Quackers 😋 #dogsoftiktok #petsoftiktok #dogs #goldenretriever

So let’s get something straight about Diego Luna: my goodness, he loves playing Cassian Andor. Just talking to him, he just seems so excited to be returning to the role he originated six years ago in Rogue One. (And it’s, somehow, been six years since Rogue One came out.) Back in 2016 I had met Luna at the Disney offices here in New York City and, back then, he was almost bouncing off the walls with excitement. So, by this point I had assumed maybe this would be old hat for him and, now doing press for the new series, maybe he’d be going through the motions. I am happy to report, no, he is not going through any motions. He is still almost bouncing off the walls with enthusiasm. In fact, the only thing he doesn’t seem to totally like about Andor (streaming on Disney+ starting September 21st) is the fact it’s called Andor, since so many other characters are also involved and it delves into the beginning the the Rebel Alliance.

The first season of Andor takes place roughly five years before the events in Rogue One. When we meet Cassian, he’s not the dashing spy from the Rebel Alliance we met in Rogue One. He’s, well, kind of a fuck up. And he’s just got himself into some local trouble that is about to have bigger repercussions than he even imagined. The first couple of episodes we meet the people close to Cassian and they all basically tell him he’s a loser. Then a mysterious man (played by Stellan Skarsgård) shows up looking for Cassian because he sees potential in the young troublemaker and has an offer for Cassian that might lead to bigger and better things.

At the time I spoke to Luna I had seen four episodes of Andor. It’s a very different vibe than Rogue One. In that movie, because of the director situation, we had elements from Gareth Edwards and we had elements from Tony Gilroy that meshed into kind of a happy accident of a movie that worked. With Andor, this is completely Gilroy’s vision (it’s pretty cool we are getting 24 episodes of a Star Wars series from the director of Michael Clayton) from beginning to end that takes its time to set up where, exactly, this is all going. And as Luna explains, if Gilroy puts something in this series, you better believe it’s there for a reason.

Also, will Luna finally get his wish that Cassian Andor meets Jabba the Hutt? Well … Luna clarifies he doesn’t want Cassian to meet Jabba, he wants to meet Jabba.

I will say, after Rogue One, I was not expecting to see Cassian again.

It is exciting because, also, it’s not just about seeing Cassian again but having the chance to work with an amazing team and to even challenge ourselves in a more, ambitious, probably, in the good way of that word. In a more ambitious journey than the one we took on Rogue One, but it was ambitious already.

Well, it is ambitious. I’ve seen four episodes and we are going to get 24 episodes over two seasons and, from a live-action standpoint, between this and Rogue One, we are, I’m pretty sure, going to spend more time with Cassian Andor than any other Star Wars character. Even more than characters like Luke…

I never even thought of it like that.

It’s true though.

Yeah, it’s true. It’s true. And I mean, I hate that you brought it up because now I’m going to be thinking about it. But it’s true. And I’ll tell you what I feel. I mean, to be honest, if you’ve seen four episodes, you understand that it is quite unfair that the show is called Andor because it is about many characters.

It is, yes.

It is long format to get the chance to go deep into the story of all these people. And I believe we are so lucky to have Tony Gilroy writing this, because his writing is so specific. It’s so complex and so real. There’s not a single moment that happens because someone said like, “Oh, I like the grass. Let’s have that cartoon walking in the grass.” No. No. No. It’s grass because of something. There is an answer for every question in his writing and that, specificity, is beautiful. And this long format allows you to go deep into that specificity. It can still be the big action, whatever, action and adventure piece. And, at the same time, take time for the very intimate stuff that makes characters real. And if that’s going to take longer, well, I’m sorry: yes, it might take longer.

I’m curious what the difference is filming Rogue One and filming this series. Because in Rogue One you have Gareth Edwards’s vision and then Tony comes in later, it’s an interesting mashup because Tony and Gareth are very different filmmakers. But Andor seems like one person’s vision of what this story should be from the very first moment. And so I’m curious what the difference is for you between filming Rogue One and Andor.

No, it is very different. It is very different. This is a show that I received the call first, asking would you be interested in exploring this opportunity and this idea? And I said yes. And then the day I had the chat with Tony Gilroy on, in general, he taught me what he was envisioning and what he was thinking of and the possibilities. And when I listened to that I was like: that is a show I would like to make sure it gets done. Not just because I am the actor playing Cassian or because I did Rogue One, but because of the story you just taught me. It’s important that it matters as it is, by itself, the story. It happens to be part of this universe, which is amazing. It happens to be part of something that started with Rogue One. But by itself, it means so much. It’s a story about how someone transitions from being lost – in a very selfish moment of his life; in a very cynical moment – where he doesn’t know what he’s capable of and how life and the journey kind of transforms, or helps transform, this person into someone that feels useful. For a cost. I think that it’s a beautiful story to tell by itself.

I think that is something Tony brought from beginning to end this time that I really connected with. And that kind of everyone joined already knowing what the journey was going to be like. And I think we owe that freedom to Rogue One and what happened with Rogue One. Even though Rogue One was a very different process, we owe the freedom we have today to what that film was and what that film generated.

Last time we spoke, you gave a really interesting quote about Cassian in Rogue One. You said, “He’s been fighting all his life and obviously coming from a traumatic experience that makes him decide to go all the way and put his life aside and just fight for the cause.” Okay, how did you know that in 2016? Did you come up with that backstory yourself? Or did Tony tell you? Because that’s very similar to what I just saw in these four episodes.

Well, exactly. That is when I go like, “Shit. This has to happen.” When Tony explains to me the story he wants to tell, I go, “Well, that is really close. Really, really, really close to the story I had in my head when I was performing before.”

Okay, so that was your story.

Obviously, back then, it was like a back story that we would create in order to go to set and know what logic is behind the decisions the character is making. And so we decide many things on the process and then yourself, as an actor, you have to do a lot of work. So I created a whole back story that no one will know. Ever. Unless they get me very drunk and I end up telling it, but I promise myself not to tell anyone. But I know a story.

I created a backstory to the character in order to be able to play it. I do that with every role I play. Every answer that’s not in the script, you have to answer it yourself and that’s my job. But when Tony pitched me the story here, there’s a lot of, in essence, it’s kind of like the same struggle. And I tell you why, because I think our references are very real. Our references are very close to the reality we live in. And I think Star Wars has always been a tool for that.

Right…

A tool for a voice or a perspective to make comments on reality. That’s the beauty of science fiction. Yes, you can do something that is entertaining and exciting, is everything you are looking for. And, at the same time, you can be saying or raising a reflection that matters to you. Because when you start saying this happens in a galaxy far, far away, you have permission to say things that probably you want … if it wasn’t that way.

Last time we spoke, you said on Rogue One, when you first saw someone in the Darth Vader costume, you said, “Holy shit.” Because all these memories of your childhood came back. Did that happen at any moment during this series?

It happens. I would tell you, when we’re shooting, it happens every week or every day. It’s insane. It’s insane because it’s very little stuff. Suddenly you look at something and it connects with your childhood, or with a dream, or with a moment of one of the films that has been there. It’s been present forever. But I would tell you one thing that I, on this series, finally, I managed to switch from the little kid enjoying the ride to the actor that has to deliver. It was easier for me to switch from one to the other than in Rogue One.

I see. That makes sense.

Also, you know why? Because I was part of the process from scratch. So I was there talking to the designers, seeing everything when it was a sketch. Seeing the costumes and the props and the scenarios when they were a sketch. In Rogue One, I was dropped into something that was already happening. And here, I’ve been able to digest the process since I’ve been part from the beginning.

Well, we are all rooting for you to finally meet Jabba in this series. I hope that happens.

I don’t want Cassian to do it!

Oh, you want to do it.

I said I want to do it!

Right.

Because of the curiosity I have. Don’t blame Cassian!

‘Andor’ begins streaming via Disney+ on September 21st. You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.

A new course at University of Texas will examine the songwriting of Taylor Swift. The course, titled “The Taylor Swift Songbook,” opens this fall and will offer an analysis of Swift’s songwriting and storytelling craft.

According to University of Texas’ website, Swift’s work will be read and paired alongside that of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Keats and Sylvia Plath.

The course will be taught by Dr. Elizabeth Scala, who became fascinated with Swift’s craft after her daughter introduced her to her music. Scala spoke with Austin American-Statesman about the course, saying, “Swift is an intelligent and talented songwriter, and her writing skills are what made me focus on her,” Scala said. “For me, it’s all about form (not just or even primarily about content). We will study Swift’s songs as poems and literary structures.”

As for required course materials, students enrolled must acquire Swift’s albums, Folklore, Evermore, and Red (Taylor’s Version).

This is the second university course focusing on Swift’s songwriting. The first ran from January to March earlier this year at New York University’s Clive Davis Institute.

Over at Texas State University in San Marcos, a course called “Harry Styles and the Cult of Celebrity: Identity, the Internet, and European Pop Culture,” will be offered beginning next spring.

TV history is being made this year, and it’s not just because of the massive amounts of new shows are entering the ring. For the first time ever, a three-hour Law & Order crossover event will kick off the fall TV season and feature Detective Cosgrove alongside Detective Shaw, Detective Benson, and Detective Stabler (who will be fully clothed) before meeting up with Jack McCoy, and Nolan Price. Who says the multiverse is just for superheroes?

The drama will begin with Law & Order: Organized Crime, jump on over to Law & Order: SVU before colluding on the original long-running series, Law & Order. The event will air Thursday, September 22nd at 8 pm on NBC, then stream on Peacock the next day.

Creator Dick Wolf says that this crossover was bound to happen sooner or later, as the case they are solving requires all hands on deck. The episode follows the crew as they begin to solve the murder of a young woman before realizing that it’s a part of a much larger crime ring. So very New York.

“Nothing demonstrates the power of the Law & Order brand more than an ambitious three-hour event with a story that is truly ripped from the headlines that starts on Organized Crime, then migrates to SVU and finally the trial on Law & Order,” Wolf said in a statement. “[Writers] Rick and Gwen did an amazing job writing a compelling script and I can’t think of a bigger and better way to launch the new season of Law & Order.”

Check out the teaser above.

(Via Deadline)

In the first episode of House of the Dragon, King Viserys I goes from obsessing over producing a male heir to naming his teenage daughter Rhaenyra the future and first Queen of Westeros. King Viserys (played with an energetic melancholy by English actor Paddy Considine) faces several personal conflicts: his unpredictable brother Daemon makes a violent arrival in King’s Landing, his wife dies during childbirth, his only son and heir dies anyway, and then his brother betrays him. In the episode, we get that Viserys is a more thoughtful and active ruler compared to what we’ve seen in Westeros over the course of Game of Thrones.

But he’s also emotional and slightly impulsive as a result, like most rulers of Westeros are. The guy also likes building miniatures (he’s just like Henry Cavill). Viserys, Rhaenyra (who wants adventure), and Daemon (who wants to be understood) are not like the Targaryens we saw or learned about on Game of Thrones: unhinged and Iron Throne-oriented. The House of the Dragon Targaryens might have some of that in them, but it’s not their defining characteristic… yet.

On Game of Thrones, the violent and cruel Viserys’s uncompromising desire for power got molten gold poured onto his head. Daenerys Targaryen had an interesting if meandering journey, but met a disastrous end thanks to the Targaryen tendencies we heard about for so long: they all go mad and/or desire incest eventually. The character’s final moments, which included an attempt to pursue a romantic relationship with Jon Snow after discovering they are related and burning down the home she spent her entire life trying to get back didn’t add up, save for what Game of Thrones always integrated into expositional dialogue: Targaryens are crazy!

Even at the show’s narrative peaks, Daenerys always felt like a dense caricature, a version of something potentially complex and layered, but never quite living up to her own hype. No matter how hard the show tried to make Daenerys – or Viserys – human, it felt strained and uninteresting, which didn’t help Daenerys’s unearned, unemotional end. The one-dimensionality of the Targaryens as presented on Game of Thrones made House of the Dragon as unappealing to me as, say, the string of words “Game of Thrones spin-off.”

Unfortunately, despite myself, House of the Dragon has potential, possibly even more than Game of Thrones. It has little source material to jump off of, so while it is based on something, it has its own, singular journey, untethered to several hundred paged books that a bunch of people will yell about ruining online. Game of Thrones suggested that Targaryens are all the same, even the good ones.

But against all odds and centuries of incest, House of the Dragon gives the silver-haired royals substance, individuality, and necessary humanity that Game of Thrones gave almost every character except the Targaryens and Ramsay Bolton (they even gave this to Cersei after she blew up half the characters). While it’s completely possible that King Viserys, Daemon, or Rhaenyra could snap into the Targaryen madness we learned about so, so much on the show’s predecessor, it will be a more earned journey, and more gutting than Daenerys sudden turn for the plot.

Imagine, for one moment, Inauguration Day in [INSERT YEAR HERE]. It’s a cool, January day in Washington, D.C., with the U.S. Capitol and the National Mall all decorated for the swearing in of the new President of the United States of America. The Chief Justice prepares to swear in that person, who just so happens to be noted ESPN personality Stephen A. Smith.

Ok, so, it’s a little silly to imagine. Smith has a pretty good thing going for him as a guy who makes a lot of money to talk sports. But Smith has never been shy about wading into the world of politics, which led to Paul Finebaum wanting to know if Smith would ever decide to explore a run for the presidency — as Finebaum specifically mentioned, an actor became president for two terms (Ronald Reagan), while a reality TV star also became president (Rutherford B. Hayes Donald Trump), so why not Smith?

Well as it turns out, Smith is open to the possibility on one condition.

“If I thought I could win, yes,” Smith said. “If I thought that I could rally — I would have told you hell no, no way in hell years ago. I was a father out of wedlock, obviously when you think about the standards that were once held in the White House, I’m pretty damn good, but I’m not perfect, and those imperfections obviously would be highlighted when 350-plus [million] American citizens are relying on you to institute and implement policy that would affect their lives.

“So, I would have told you, once upon a time, hell no,” Smith continued. “But when I see some of the things that have transpired, I can honestly tell you, even though that answer would still be no, if people came to me, and enough people came to me, and said to me, ‘Stephen A, you have a legitimate shot to win the presidency of the United States of America,’ I would strongly, strongly consider running, because I know two things would happen: I would know how to act, number one, and number two, I would think about America.”

Smith went on to say he’d be about “mass appeal,” and that “whatever it took to make this country better is what I would do.” And while he really does not want to ever run, Smith explained that recent years have made him more open to the possibility.

“I’ve lost so much respect for the nonsense that I see taking place on Capitol Hill that if somebody said to me, ‘Stephen A, you could win this thing,’ yes, I would run for the presidency of the United States of America,” Smith said.

I am extremely confident he’d win every debate, so at least there’s that.

In the 2000s and 2010s, Elisha Cuthbert was a fixture on men’s magazines (or “lad mags,” as they’re known in the U.K.) like Maxim, Ralph, and FHM. Basically, the kind of publications that you wouldn’t want to read in public. It was not by choice, however.

On an episode of the Broad Ideas podcast, the 24 and Happy Endings star discussed the pressure she faced as a young actress to pose for magazine covers, often while wearing little clothing (the podcast host, The O.C.‘s Rachel Bilson, can probably relate). “I’ve been pretty vocal about my sort of, I don’t want to say disappointment about being in that whole circus. But there was really no option back then, though,” she said. “You were out promoting something. That’s what the [film] studio wanted you to do.”

Cuthbert continued, “We kind of ended up in a space at the time where that was really happening. I mean, Halle Berry was doing it, for God’s sake. Jennifer Aniston was doing it… We were probably too young to be subjected to that, and feeling pressured to do that.” She said the reason studios pushed her to be in those kind of magazines is because they were “viewed by 30 million people. There was no arguing that it was a way to be seen and to promote anything that you were doing at the time.”

You can listen to the podcast below:

Also, watch Happy Endings. What a good show.

(Via ET Online)

Despite his shady dealings behind the scenes during Donald Trump’s administration, Jared Kushner is a pretty mild-mannered guy. One might even say boringly so. (Just see the scathing review of his memoir.) So it was pretty unusual to see Kushner start using profanity during a recent interview with Megyn Kelly.

While discussing the non-stop media circus around Trump, Kushner got particularly incensed about reports that the former president’s 2016 campaign was colluding with Russia. Via Mediaite:

“I’m sitting there and saying ‘We didn’t collude with anybody,’ and I’m seeing the New York Times and CNN and the Washington Post parrot these leaks they’re getting from intel sources, or I don’t know who the hell they’re getting it from, and every time they would write it would be the biggest thing, then people would cover it. And it turned out to all be a bunch of bullshit,” Kushner said.

According to Kushner, the media’s willingness to report anything about Trump became a cottage industry that Michael Cohen, Chris Christie, and Mary Trump capitalized on. And speaking of Mary, Kushner addressed the elephant in the room that he was the “Mar-a-Lago mole” who ratted out his father-in-law.

“So first of all, it’s absolutely not true, categorically, in every way. But I think that’s more of a statement of the sad state of the media, where the more outlandish – especially if it includes me – then the media will write about and create headlines,” Kushner said. Later, he added, “I don’t even think [Mary] said she thought it was the case. She thought it could be the case. So I read the article and I thought, ‘This is the craziest thing I’ve ever seen.’ But for whatever reason, the media thought it was worth covering.”

(Via Mediaite)

My Chemical Romance had been inactive in recent years, so their ongoing tour was one of the most anticipated of the year. The band have kept things interesting on a nightly basis, too, with Gerard Way mixing it up by wearing a dress to perform. Specifically, he donned a green and white cheerleader uniform that appeared to be custom-made, with a “W” emblem (for “Way,” presumably) on the chest.

Also notable about the set was it included a performance of “The World Is Ugly.” The song was previously played a handful of times in 2008 and this was MCR’s first time performing it since then. The song was unreleased until a 2009 studio recording was shared as a single in 2012, as part of the Conventional Weapons compilation. The setlist also featured, as have many other recent ones, “The Foundations Of Decay,” the band’s May single that was their first new song in eight years.

As for the tour, it started just this past weekend and is set to run through mid-October. The North American trek features two-night stops in Toronto (at Scotiabank Arena), Boston (TD Garden), Brooklyn (Barclays Center), and Newark (Prudential Center), as well as a five-night stay at Los Angeles’ The Forum.

House of the Dragon is already a ratings hit for HBO, which drew a premiere record while HBO Max struggled to cope with all of those Sunday night streams. Only one episode has aired so far, but people are on board, and that means they want to draw comparisons with characters. That’s a big reason why Prince Daemon Targaryen is being called a Homelander. I still believe it’s way too soon to make that call, but let’s talk about another comparison which really has nothing to do with a character but everything to do with looks.

Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen (who was the first character to unleash a “dracarys!”) is currently being portrayed (as a younger version of the character) onscreen by Millie Alcock. In her adult years, Emma D’Arcy will pick up the role, and the previews have caused some fans to do a double take. That’s because Euphoria viewers keep thinking they’re seeing Hunter Schafter when D’Arcy appears. It’s a thing that’s becoming a meme, which has led to questions of exactly what is going on here.

This was already a sort-of question that popped up back in March while anticipation heated up for the Game of Thrones prequel series.

“Does anyone else see Hunter Schafer as Visenya Targaryen?” one Targaryen loyalist tweeted. “She has that look I always imagined Visneya having. Hunter looks like she could be related to Emma D’Arcy (Rhaenyra actress) too.”

And now that people are seeing Emma, they think that they see Hunter. An infographic over at Reddit has some fun with this, and the side by sides are also going down on Twitter.

Don’t worry about Hunter missing out by not being on House of the Dragon. She will soon be seen in The Hunger Games film, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, so she’s getting prequel action. And of course, she’ll be in Euphoria Season 3.